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Tuesday, 2 April 2013

play = conflict

By Anna

There is a monster in my house. She is 3 ½ years old and her
name is Eliza.

When she scrunches up her eyes, nose, and mouth into the
center of her face and growls, all other ferocious beasts beware. She is the
toughest of the tough, until she laughs out loud and falls down on the floor.

Last Friday, I was with my small monster and my older
daughter Alex (7) at a playground near our favorite bakery. I was on the top of
a play structure with both girls, and I’d been assigned the role of “monster
who eats people”. Thus, I was the worstof
the monsters. As I ate people (a.k.a. a delicious chocolate breakfast treat
from the bakery), sipped coffee, and enjoyed the warmth of early spring, some
children climbed the large wooden stairs towards us.

Eliza walked to the top of the stairs and looked down with
her best monster face, blocking the way. I paused for less than three seconds
to see what would evolve. But, a voice from below instantly yelled, “Hey! Can
you move out of the way? My child is trying to get up there, too. This park is for
everybody.”

I turned to see a woman standing below us. “It’s okay,” I
smiled, “I’m her mom. I have this. We are being monsters today. It’s going to
be okay.” I turned back to the stairs to find that Eliza had already moved quietly
to the side. The woman, who I later learned was at the park with six toddlers
from her home daycare, was still trying to argue. “It won’t be okay if he backs
up on those stairs and falls.”

I’ve spent the last seventeen years in the field of early
childhood education and the last nine years specifically researching play. I
fully understood how much this woman had singlehandedly (in one self-centered
moment from fifteen feet away) stolen from the young boy whom she was
trying to protect, and from Eliza (the monster). Later, I sat next to the woman
on a bench and rehearsed how I would explain to her the importance of
respecting children, of giving them space to work out their own conflicts and to
create conflicts in the first place. I would say that I’m about to complete a
doctoral degree; that I know about
play and learning, and that children need and often enjoy conflict in the safe
space of play. They create challenges themselves, dive into their own dramas, and
just as easily banish obstacles from their latest narratives.

But, I didn’t have to say any of this. Andrew (the
18-month-old whom Eliza had blocked at the top of the stairs) spent the entire forty-five
minutes we were at the park following Eliza everywhere she went. He never let
his newly found monster out of his sight. He pointed at her, grinned, and said,
“No” before toddling away and looking back hopefully.

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